This year at YAPC::NA we are experimenting with a new form of talk
that is part presentation and part hackathon. We are having four
extended workshops during the conference where attendees are invited
to bring their computers along and experience an in-depth and very
likely hands-on session where they will leave the conference not just
thinking about new technologies, but actually having worked with them.
To kick things off on Tuesday, JT Smith is hosting a WebGUI Workshop
[http://conferences.mongueurs.net/yn2008/talk/1243]. During the
workshop, each attendee will install WebGUI, browse through the
interface, and learn how to write custom plug-ins. This is a hands-on
workshop that will show you just how easy and fun it can be to write
powerful web applications in WebGUI. This is a great workshop that
typically costs hundreds of dollars at the WebGUI conference, but is
being offered free to any YAPC::NA attendee who wants to take
advantage of it.
After that, Matt Trout is going to follow up with another web
development tutorial, Catalyst: 21st Century Perl Web Development
[http://conferences.mongueurs.net/yn2008/talk/1327]. This tutorial
will get you up to speed on what you need to get started building
powerful web applications with the Catalyst web framework. Catalyst
is a powerful and flexible web framework that rivals systems like Ruby
on Rails and Django, only in our favorite language, Perl!
The next day, Stevan Little will be giving a Moose Tutorial
[http://conferences.mongueurs.net/yn2008/talk/1062]. This two hour
session will get you up and running with Perl's post-modern object
system. Moose adds a powerful and fun object system to Perl 5 that is
inspired by Common LISP, Smalltalk, and Perl 6. You don't want to
miss this session.
And finally, the Parrot and Perl6 developers are getting together for
a Parrot and Perl 6 Workshop
[http://conferences.mongueurs.net/yn2008/talk/1078]. Come to this
session laptop in hand and leave with a working version of Parrot and
Rakudo (Perl 6 on Parrot). This workshop was the catalyst for having
the workshop session this year and from the chatter that I've seen on
the planning list, will be a "can't miss" event for those interested
in the next iteration of the Perl programming language.
So there you have it, four sessions of in-depth technology that are
guaranteed to make it more difficult for you to decide on what talk to
go to this YAPC::NA.